Israeli Border Control officer caught on video kicking child

Hebron
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Caught on camera, an Israeli Border Police officer kicks a Palestinian child in the southern West Bank. Police have launched a probe into the incident.

The incident was filmed by a volunteer from B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, on June 29 in Hebron, in the southern part of the West Bank.

The video footage shows a 9-year-old Palestinian boy walking down the road, when a uniformed officer runs up to him and grabs his arm, causing the child to fall on the ground.

This is followed by another police officer walking up and kicking the crying child. After this, the child is allowed to run away from the site.

The Israeli Border Police have issued a statement denouncing the behavior of the policemen, which it claims “contrasts the values of the force.”

The statement reads: “The Border Police commander instructed on setting up a team to investigate the incident immediately and its conclusions are due in the coming days."

After the incident, the boy, Abdul-Rahman Burqan, admitted to the Israeli police that the officers had chased him after he swore at one of them. However, he also claimed that, in a separate incident, an Israeli soldier had stomped on his hand after he and his friend were stopped at a checkpoint about a month ago.

The human rights organization, B'Tselem, distributes cameras to Palestinians so that they can film possible incidents of abuse by Israeli security forces. The cameraman, Raed Abu Rimle, says he began to shoot the video when he saw the officer ambushing the child behind a wall.

Rimie told the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth: "I heard yelling and I saw a soldier kick a boy in the stomach. After the policemen left him, I approached the kid. He was so scared that he'd pissed his pants."

This incident follows an accusation by a group of senior British lawyers that Israeli military authorities regularly breach the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the 4th Geneva Convention, with regard to the detainment of Palestinian children in the West Bank.